New environmental regulations on refrigerants have forced the refrigeration and air-conditioning industry to look for new refrigerants with low global warming potential (GWP).
Replacement refrigerants are being sought that have low GWP, no toxicity, non-flammability, reasonable cost and excellent refrigeration performance.
Fluoroolefins have been proposed as refrigerants alone or in mixtures. When used in a vapor compression system, any refrigerant has a tendency to leak from the system over time, as holes develop in the system. However, the leakage of refrigerant is at times difficult to detect, especially where the holes in the system are small. A solution to this problem has been to add a dye to the refrigerant and let the dye run through the system. However, there is a cost associated with the addition of the dye in terms of both materials and time. In addition, often the dye must be run through the system for a period of time before the leak can be detected, which requires follow up.